People are often shocked by cloth diapers, but as we’ve learned firsthand, it’s really no big whoop to wash diapers yourself.  We are impressed, however, by the families who cart their diaper laundry to coin operated machines a few times a week.  If you are just such a family, we’d like to know how you do it.  Rebecca wrote a post on washing diapers in public machines here, but we’d appreciate even more input.  Did you spend a lot of money on laundry?  Are there machines in your building or do you have to travel to a Laundromat?  Have you gotten any negative or positive responses from other Laundromat customers or building tenants?  Would you recommend it to someone else?  Thanks for sharing your experiences and wisdom with our readers!

In the early days of the Green Baby Guide, I admitted to some baby “rules” I violate to save the planet.  One of them is separating baby clothes from the rest of the laundry–a guideline I heard during our childbirth class and read in various baby books and websites.   I am not sure what the reasoning behind that bit of advice is; certainly if someone in the house has a contagious illness there are easier ways to catch it than wearing clothes that have been washed in the same load.

The average family of four does more than seven loads of laundry a week.  Many people wash even more than that, according to the answers to this Yahoo question.  We (three of us) don’t do any more than three–maybe four–loads a week, and that includes diaper laundry! (We also use cloth napkins and dish towels instead of paper towels.)   Reducing the amount of laundry you do can save thousands of gallons of water, not to mention electricity.  If you have a 40 gallon top-loading machine and wash a load a day, you’re using over 14,000 gallons of water to wash your clothes every year!  Tumble drying all those clothes could release as much as 1,825 pounds of carbon into the atmosphere in a year’s time, depending on where you live.

So how can you cut down on laundry?  Here are three ideas:

• 1. Don’t be so obsessive about cleanliness. Re-wear clothes and re-use towels until they’re actually dirty. It’s okay to change sheets no more than once a year. (Just kidding on that last one.)
• 2. Wash full loads. A load is full when it’s filled to the top with clothes without stuffing them in.
• 3. Don’t sort clothes. If you have trouble making full loads all in one color/fabric type, try combining them. (Make sure to wash in cold water so your whites don’t turn pink.) I do separate clothes by color, which means I wash whites much less frequently than darks, since we prefer darker clothes.

Doing much less laundry works for me.  (For more Works for Me Wednesday tips, check out Rocks in My Dryer.)  How many loads of laundry do you wash per week?   Any more tips for reducing the amount you do?

More Green Baby Guide laundry posts:

Offsetting Water Used to Wash Cloth Diapers

Line Drying Trouble-shooting

Using a Drying Rack to Fight Global Warming

Washing Cloth Diapers in an Apartment: Eco-friendly or Totally Nuts?

Save Energy, Money, and Water with a Front-loading Washing Machine

The Cheapest Eco-friendly Laundry Detergent

Green Breakthrough: Save Energy by Washing Cloth Diapers in Cold Water

Finding Diaper-friendly, Earth-friendly Detergent

Washable vs. Disposable: Environmental Debates to Ponder

I often hear people say that cloth diapers are no better for the planet than disposables because of all the water used to wash them.  This argument has never made too much sense to me.  Water is a renewable resource, but the trees cut down to make disposable diapers are often harvested unsustainably.  The plastic used on each diaper is a petroleum product-definitely not a renewable resource.  Then there’s the whole landfill issue. . . .

Not to say that I don’t care about wasting water.  If you wash diapers every other day in a top loader, you’ll use a whopping 7,200 gallons water a year.  Do you use a wet pail to soak your diapers?  That’s 360 more gallons a year, for a grand total of 7,560.  The good news is, it’s not necessary to blow through that much water.  I estimate that I use under 1,200 gallons water a year washing diapers.  I have a front loader that uses 12.4 gallons per wash, and I wash diapers every four days instead of every other day.

I came up with the brilliant idea of “offsetting” the amount of water I use to wash diapers.  The concept is simple: you try to make up for an environmental sin by doing a good deed for the planet.  (Disclaimer: I realize that this whole “offsetting” concept is suspect, and we should all be doing the most to conserve resources at all times.)  The first step in my personal water offsetting mission is to use as little water as possible on laundry.  It would be difficult to offset 7,560 gallons of water a year, but by practicing just a few extra water conservation techniques, I can easily offset the 1,200 gallons I use.

Of course there are dozens of ways to reduce water waste.  I was surprised to find that my first two water-saving ideas conserved more than enough water to make up for my diaper-laundry water. 

1. Double up your toilet flushes.  The average person flushes eight times day.  At 1.6 gallons per flush, that equals 12.8 gallons a day.  Double up just one flush and you’ll save 584 gallons a year.  That’s almost half the amount of water I’d use washing diapers already.

2. Reduce showering time.  I am guilty of wasteful showering.  The average shower uses 2.5 gallons of water a minute.  A ten minute shower uses twenty-five gallons of water.  If two adults each take ten-minute showers and reduce them to five-minute showers (or shower every other day), they could save twenty-five gallons a day, or 9,125 gallons a year!  Now I’ve more than offset the amount of water used to wash diapers.  It’s interesting to note that two adults taking daily 10-minute showers are using fifteen times the amount of water needed to wash a year’s worth of diaper laundry.

Does anyone else feel guilty for washing cloth diapers in water?  How do you assuage your guilt?  Any crazy water-saving ideas you care to share with us?  Please tell!

Yesterday, Joy wrote  about saving money and reducing carbon emissions by line drying clothes.  I lived without a dryer for three years, which forced me to hang all my clothes on a big indoor rack, over the radiator, or out on the balcony.  Later, I lived in an apartment with coin-operated dryers, but I was so used to line-drying that I continued doing it.  Then, after about five solid years of dryer abstinence,  I started using the dryer again.  I felt guilty about it, but it was just so much easier, especially in during those nine rainy months of the year.

So why do people give up on line-drying?  Here are some of the biggest line-drying problems you may encounter–and how to solve them.

1. Problem: Your homeowners’ association or neighborhood association does not allow clotheslines.

Solution:  This could be an issue to raise at a meeting.  With more people striving to go green, the “unsightliness” of laundry lines may seem less important than the hole in the ozone layer.  Alternately, you could dry your clothes on a rack indoors.

2. Problem: Bugs get in your laundry.

Solution: Keep your clotheslines away from trees and bushes.  I admit that one reason I stopped drying clothes outside was because of the earwigs that climbed into my clothes and hung on for dear life.  They would not shake out, and that disgusted me!  I even tried setting my rack on a table, but they still managed to get in my clothes.  If anyone has a solution to this problem, please post a comment. 

3. Problem: It’s so humid, cold, or damp that your laundry never dries.

Solution: Unfortunately, drying your clothes indoors in the winter means that you are using more heat from your furnace to dry your clothes.  Still, doing this uses less energy than your dryer.  The average household does a load of laundry every day, so it’s not practical to leave one load hanging all over the house for a several days.   One idea is to let clothes air dry for a day, then toss them in the dryer to finish the job.  You’ll find they need a fraction of the normal time in the dryer once they’ve had a head start on the clothesline. 

4. Problem: Your laundry emerges stiff as a board from the clothesline.

Solution: A vinegar rinse can help soften line-dried clothes, as can some brisk shaking before hanging on the line.  In Europe, where almost everyone line-dries, they seem to iron all of their clothes.  Most Americans, on the other hand, are used to relying on the dryer to smooth out the wrinkles.  Ironing uses far less energy than the dryer–though obviously it also takes more time.  Again, you can throw the clothes in the dryer just before they dry.  Or add a wet towel to a load of air-dried clothes.  After just about five minutes, they will soften up. 

5. Problem: There is nowhere to hang your laundry.

Solution: Look into some of the clothes-drying racks that make a good use of space.  This one lowers from the ceiling, and this one retracts against the wall when you’re done using it.

6. Problem: It takes too much time to hang the laundry and then wait for it to dry.

Solution: Back when I was a line-drying purist, I scoffed at this excuse.  I have to admit, though, that there’s some merit to it.  It takes me over fifteen minutes to hang a load of laundry.  If you do a load of laundry a day (which I don’t), that would add 105 minutes to your laundry time each week.  In the summer, I’ve found that laundry dries just as fast on the line as it does in the dryer.  In the winter, it can take over a week to dry on the line (see #3), which may not work for some people.   Joy is a much fast clothes-hanger than I am, taking just seven minutes to hang a load.  And remember it’s not all or nothing–even hanging one load out to dry each week will make a difference! 

For someone who is trying to promote line-drying, I sound very negative!  Whenever I am grumbling about line-drying  my clothes, I just remember how much energy and money I’m saving.  That’s motivation enough for me!   Despite my laundry woes, I  also love line-drying for all the reasons Joy enumerated in yesterday’s post.  Please, everyone, post your line-drying tips and suggestions so I no longer have any reason to resort to my electricity-guzzling dryer!

Do you own a solar powered dryer? If not, they’re available for under twenty bucks and can save loads of emissions in their lifetime. Yes, I am talking about the humble drying rack.

Whether you live in an urban apartment or sprawling acreage, anyone can handle erecting a drying rack and letting nature do the rest. You won’t need dozens of clothespins to hang each sock, baby t-shirt, or undergarment.  Just flop the clothing on the rack in the morning and take it off later in the day.

In the summer I bask in the glory of sun dried clothing.  I hang the sheets, towels and adult clothing on the line while my toddler helps (somewhat sloppily) by arranging dishtowels and diaper covers on our drying rack.  

Although it air drying isn’t glamorous, it is revolutionary.  

What are the environmental benefits?  A clothes dryer is one of the biggest energy users in your household.  Depending on its efficiency, it can eat up as much energy as your oven and more than your water heater, burning up to 5000 watts of electricity each hour.  Refrigerators technically use more, since they’re on all the time, but per hour, dryers are the largest consumers.  Dryers also waste energy twice, since they suck in air from your home (which has been cooled in summer and heated in winter) and then blow it out of the house.

What are the cost benefits?   Besides lowering your utility bill, you’ll reduce expenses on clothing.  My sister, a mother of five children who is constantly battling with laundry, will only air dry her children’s garments.  Since line drying doesn’t set stains the way a heated dryer does, she prevents soiled clothing from being permanently ruined in the dryer.  If the stain doesn’t come out, she just tosses it back in the wash.  Air drying also prevents shrinking and limits wear.

How can I take it a step further?  If you’d like to air dry all your laundry and set up a clothesline,  check out Laundry List–a site dedicated to helping people move away from dependency of dryers.  Even hanging just a few loads a week can make a huge difference in your energy bill and your carbon emissions. 

Thanks for joining Thrifty Green Thursday!  Come back tomorrow for Rebecca’s line-drying trouble-shooting tips. 

On our recent article “Cloth Diaper Recommendations for a Complete Novice,” one of our readers asked if it would be worth investing in cloth diapers if she lived in an apartment with coin-operated laundry.  In my opinion, based on number-crunching rather than personal experience, it would be worth a try.  Even if you have to pay to run the washer and dryer, you will save money using cloth diapers.  As long as your washer and dryer work reasonably well and you don’t have to keep feeding it quarters to make them properly wash and dry your diapers, it should be a better choice for the environment, too.

Our reader pays $1 to run the washer and another $1 to run the dryer.  Obviously she could save money and carbon emissions by hanging diapers to dry, but that not may be practical in her apartment or climate.  I wash diapers every four days, or ninety times a year.  If she can get away with running just one cycle per load (i.e., she does not use extra rinses or run the washer twice to get the diapers clean), she’ll pay $90 a year to wash the diapers.  I know some apartment dryers barely work, but let’s assume that $1 will adequately dry her diapers, so she’ll pay $90 for drying, too.  If she uses Biokleen Laundry detergent (see our posts on eco-friendly detergents here and here), she’ll spend $.139/load, or $12.51/year on detergent for her diaper loads.  Total washing and drying costs (for one year): $192.51.

I spent just $129.50 on one year of diaper supplies, which is on the cheap side.  I estimated in my Cloth vs. Disposable Cost Comparison post that, depending on the diaper system, you could spend anywhere from $120 to about $600 on start-up costs.  Total start-up costs: $120-$600.

Keep in mind that even if you do start cloth diapering and give up, you can usually sell back your diapers and get as much as half your money back.  Consumer Reports estimates that disposable diapers will cost $600-$800 a year-and obviously there is no resale value on a used disposable diaper!  With these factors  in mind, I’d say it’s definitely worth giving cloth diapering a try.  Even in the first year, you could spend about half the cost of disposables.

Now for the practical side of washing cloth diapers in an apartment.  Will you want to lug a stinky diaper pail down to the public laundry facilities?  Will your fellow apartment-dwellers be grossed out by diapers swishing in their laundry machines?  These are factors to consider, too.  Perhaps some of our readers can weigh in with personal experience.  Has anyone tried using cloth diapers with public washing machines?  How did it go?  Please help our pregnant reader solve her diapering dilemma!

Our old clunker of a washing machine came with our house.  A typical top-loader from the 1970s or ‘80s, it probably used about forty gallons of water per load.  Another downside of this appliance is that it did not even get the clothes clean.  Dark clothes (i.e., all my clothes) came out with streaks of lint, clumps of detergent, and the dirt and grime they had before “washing” them.

A positive pregnancy test motivated me to replace my washing machine.  I wanted to try cloth diapers and figured pre-baby was the ideal time to switch.  I knew a good front loader used just ten gallons of water per load, but I was disappointed that they cost so much more than top-loaders.  The cheapest one I saw advertised was $800.  Knowing I could save hundreds of gallons of water, not to mention all the energy used to heat the water, I convinced myself it would be worth it.

Then a weird thing happened: we got the washer for far less than we’d budgeted.  First, we just so happened to show up on a store-wide 10% discount day.  Also, the washer in question turned out to be on sale.  And, we got a tax credit and some sort of energy credit.  Ask around–someone may want to pay you for selecting an energy-conscious option.  To top it all off, the store offered a rebate on the delivery charge.  The strangest thing was, we did not ask about any of this stuff–the guy at Sears just kept handing us forms and coupons.  Our Kenmore washer–listed at $800 in the Sunday paper–cost us just $350 including delivery!  That’s about the same price as a standard water-guzzling top-loader.

I love my front-loading machine.  All of my clothes come out clean and fresh-smelling and take less time to dry due to the extra-fast spin cycle.  This machine has made cloth-diapering much more efficient.  I wash diapers every four days on the heavy cycle–no extra rinses and no wet pail.  This means I am able to use just 900 gallons of water a year washing cloth diapers.  I also use a third of the detergent I’d use with a top-loader.  Compare that to someone who uses a top-loader every four days: they’ll use 3600 gallons a year!  Add in extra rinse cycles, more frequent washes, and wet pails and they could be wasting as much as 10,000 gallons of water a year on their cloth diaper laundry alone.

My washer has already paid for itself and will continue to save water and energy years after my daughter is out of diapers.  If you are in the market for a new machine, hunt around for special discounts and tax credits.  You may find, as I did, that a new high efficiency machine is well within your reach.

For more Works for Me Wednesday tips, head on over to Rocks in My Dryer.

Right around when Joy wrote her post about diaper-friendly detergent I was in the process of phasing out my conventional laundry soap. I hadn’t switched over to an eco-friendly brand because I kept getting hung up on the price. Imagine my shock when I discovered that eco-friendly detergent can be cheaper than conventional detergent! I no longer have any reason to use a mainstream brand.

Laundry Detergent–from cheapest to most expensive

T.J.’s powder  / $5.49 / 40 loads / $.137 per load

Biokleen laundry powder / $13.99 / 100 loads / $.139 per load  BEST DEAL

T.J.’s liquid HE  / $8.99 / 64 loads / $.14 per load

All (not eco-friendly)  / $14.00 / 96 loads / $.145 per load

Biokleen liquid laundry detergent / $9.49 / 64 loads /$.148 per load

T.J.’s powder  / $10.00 / 64 loads / $.156 per load

Biokleen laundry powder / $8.29 / 50 loads / $.165 per load

Planet laundry powder / $10.00 / 32 loads /  $.31 per load

Ecover laundry powder / $9.00 / 20 loads / $.45 per load

Seventh Generation laundry powder / $8.00 / 16 loads / $.50 per load

 

Some Notes on the Eco-friendly Detergents

• Even though T.J.’s 40-load box is cheaper than Biokleen’s 100-load box, Biokleen gets the “Best Deal” award because it uses less packaging.
• Trader Joe’s larger box of detergent (64 loads) is a worse deal than their small box (40 loads).
• Biokleen is often on sale. I got my ten-pound box for $11.99 (.119 per load). Trader Joe’s prices stay constant.
• If you read the text on the Biokleen box, it says you’ll get 100 loads by using three-quarters of the scoop provided. With a high efficiency machine, the box recommends using just half a scoop. That means I’ll actually get 160 loads out of my Biokleen box. The actual price per load on my $11.99 sale box will be just $.074. That’s half the price of many other eco-friendly brands and the cheap conventional brand.



• The Ecover and 7^th Generation are bad deals. Not only do they cost a lot, they also come in plastic bottles that would have to be replaced frequently. (1 box of Biokleen = 10 plastic bottles of 7^th Generation!)

Some Notes on the Conventional Detergent

I wanted to see how eco-friendly brands compared to the cheapest conventional brand and was pleased to find that Biokleen powder is actually cheaper than All. Now, I’m sure you can find cheaper detergent at a big warehouse store, but I was looking only in the stores within walking distance of my house. One huge plastic container of All costs $14 ($.145/load). That’s almost twice as expensive as the Biokleen.

My frugal friend (we’ll call him Thrifty Bob) told me that he’d just found a container of All on sale for $9 ($.093/load). Not bad, Thrifty Bob! However, if you read the fine print on the container, it says you’ll get 96 loads if you fill the cup half-way full. If you have a top-loader, you may be filling the cup to the top, so you’d actually get just 48 loads out of the container. Thrifty Bob has a front-loader and admitted that he often filled the cup more than halfway full. Not only does this waste detergent, it may ruin a front-loading machine. The guy who delivered our front-loader warned me to never, ever, ever use more than a third-cup of detergent.

I will admit that before I found Biokleen laundry powder, I was using All detergent, too. Now I’m kicking myself, because not only was I paying more, I was polluting the Earth with toxins and adding a huge hunk of plastic to the recycling bin. Even worse, I had to throw away three non-recyclable plastic parts of the container: the plastic cup, spout, and cap.

Another big advantage to green detergent is that it doesn’t contain chemicals that can cling to skin or petroleum-based oils that coat diapers and cause unpleasant smells. Thanks to Biokleen, I’ll be saving money, keeping toxins away from our bodies, and helping the planet.

I’d always heard that diapers needed to be washed in the hottest water possible.  After two years of washing diapers in hot water, a post on Treehugging Family made me think about whether I could wash diapers in cold.  Peggy writes about saving 72 pounds of carbon dioxide in one month just by washing four out of five loads in cold water.  Keep that up for an entire year and you’ll save $60-100 on your energy bill. 

But doesn’t washing in hot water kill germs and bacteria?  Everything I read said no–unless your washer has a built-in heater, the hot water in your machine does not get hot enough to kill anything.  Most water heaters are set to 120 degrees.  You’d need a temperature of 160 to kill anything and 212 to actually sanitize your laundry.  Jennifer (Peggy’s co-blogger on Treehugging Family) pointed out that the dryer does get hot enough to kill bacteria.

Armed with all this information, I figured it was worth a try.  I loaded the diapers in the machine and set the knob to “cold.”  At the last minute, I almost turned the knob back to hot.  After years of believing the hot water I was using was beneficial–no, necessary–to the cloth diapering process, it was hard to make the change, even for investigative purposes.  Then, in one of the most daring moves of my cloth-diapering career, I pressed the start button and let the cold water gush into the machine.

Now that you are all on the edges of your seats, I’ll break this amazing news: the diapers came out of the dryer white, clean, and fresh-smelling.  Now, if anyone has some scientific evidence in favor of the hot-wash, please post a comment.  Until I hear advice to the contrary, I am going to wash diapers in cold water.  I just wish I’d had the gumption to take the plunge years ago!

I remember the day we made our first eco-friendly Trader Joe’s detergent purchase. We loved the smell of our fresh laundry and basked in the green glow of our new standby.  While the large plastic container was an environmental downside, the price was reasonable and the lavender essential oils gave it a crisp, clean scent.

 Roscoe helps with the laundry

We wanted to switch to a greener detergent for our family’s health and the environment. Green brands don’t contain optical brighteners, chemicals which bond to the skin with traditional detergents. We also liked the fact that scents are often plant-based rather than petroleum-based, which tends to cause less skin irritation. As if that weren’t enough to convince us, natural detergents biodegrade easily in water and don’t contain phosphates, which are very harmful to aquatic wildlife.

Overall, we were utterly thrilled with ourselves for our ethical and thrifty laundry detergent decision.  But that was until we noticed the smell. Even when Roscoe had wet diapers, they reeked of rotten garbage.  At first we thought he had been sneaking asparagus in at snack-time, but then our daycare provider noticed as well.  She recommended stripping our diapers by washing them in several loads of hot water without laundry soap to remove the residue causing the foul odor.

After further research, I found that eco-friendly detergents with essential oils or mainstream brands with petroleum-based scents can coat cloth diapers, making them non-absorbent and causing them to smell, even when wet.  There are several suggested remedies for this stinky conundrum, including using vinegar in the rinse cycle, adding baking soda to the laundry soap, and doing an additional hot rinse after each load.

The problem with all of these options is that they require more time and/or effort from our already busy family.  Instead, we’ve looked into switching to a diaper-friendly detergent and saving the rest of our Trader Joe’s stuff for our non-diaper laundry.  The list below includes some recommended choices. 

I’ve heard that Charlie’s Soap is the ideal diaper laundering product. According to the company, each load of laundry requires just one tablespoon of soap and leaves no deposits on clothes.  Many cloth diaper aficionados have informed me that there is no stripping required with Charlie’s Soap and you can buy it at some natural baby stores, such as Mother Nature’s in Portland, Oregon. 

Since Portland is two vast hours away and I’m too swamped to order Charlie’s Soap online, I opted for Biokleen’s Free and Clear Laundry Powder.  There’s no plastic container, it’s safe for high efficiency washers, it’s fragrance-free, and it’s available at my local grocery store, a mere five minutes from home. 

It’s amazing how something as simple as laundry soap can be such a challenge for a busy family trying to go green.  Then again, solving that dilemma has been a huge triumph and relief.  We’ll keep you posted as we set our eyes on future eco-friendly hurdles.  They may not be overcome with grace, but we’ll keep stumbling greenward!  For more Works for Me Wednesday tips, go to the blog carnival at rocksinmydryer.com.